Developing a Database of Roman Temples

At a Small Liberal-Arts College

John D. Muccigrosso

2 December 2016

The Project

Origins

  • Dissertation
diss
diss

Origins

  • Dissertation
  • And then an article
article
article
article
article

What is it?

Database of Roman Temples

  • Entries
    • All temples in Rome
    • All Roman-period temples

What is it?

Database of Roman Temples

  • Features
    • Location
    • Date
    • Divinity
    • Style
    • Orientation
    • Associated bibliography

Lot of things that are not (I think) of interest to more general gazetteers. {.fragment}

How?

  1. Originally looked for the data in existing projects (like Pleiades)
    • Incomplete & sometimes wrong
  2. Downloaded data from existing projects (Pleiades, vici.org, DARE)
  3. Cleaned it up
  4. Mashed it all up together in a spreadsheet
  5. Moved it to a
    • Low-barrier entry to collaboration
    • Automatic archiving
      • OK, not really
  6. Some scripts to automate conversion & archiving

How?

Hit the books!
Stamper

Ziolkowski
Ziolkowski

What it looks like

WAIT!

  • See what I did there?
Main view
Main view
New icon
New icon
Heatmap
Heatmap

What I learned to do this (so far)

  1. More UNIX shell scripting
  2. GIS/geojson utilities like jq & ogr2ogr
  3. Leaflet.js
    • javascript

Short-term Goals

  • Start using it to
    • answer research questions
    • teach
  • Contribute back our corrections & additions to original projects
    • “Think community” (Patrick Burns)
  • Publicize it more
  • Get it into a “better” format
    • Make it link-able

Long-Term Goals

  • More!
    • Add more temples
    • Add other kinds of structures(?)
      • A few mithraea are already in there
    • Add non-points like the Servian/Aurleian Wall or the pomerium
  • Let users choose what to map
  • Other things?

Working at a SLAC

Challenges

💰💰💰

  • 💰💰💰
  • Personnel
    • Admin staff
    • Tech support
  • Workload
    • Teaching
    • Other obligations

Challenges (2)

People

  • Colleagues
    • Not a lot of them
    • Just as busy as you are
  • Students
    • Undergraduate
    • Not a lot of them either
      • Especially at upper levels
Alexis
Alexis

Some solutions

  • Collaborate
Milo and Otis
Milo and Otis
  • (My one & only meme-ish slide)
  • (I’m sure @ekansa has a better one.)

Some solutions

Shrine
Shrine
Shrine map
Shrine map

Some solutions

Poster
Poster

CSCI class: Rotational leaflet markers

Orientation
Orientation

Some solutions (2)

  • Collaborate
    • External
      • #lawdi — LAWDNY
      • Twitter FaceBook
      • “Think community” (P. Burns)
  • Use what you’re doing anyway
    • Teaching

Questions?

Bibliography

Useful stuff

Agafonkin, Vladimir. 2016. “Leaflet — an Open-Source JavaScript Library for Interactive Maps.” Accessed December 2. http://leafletjs.com/.

Muccigrosso, John D. 1998. “Factional Competition and Monumental Construction in Mid-Republican Rome.” United States – Michigan: University of Michigan. United States – Michigan. http://search.proquest.com/docview/304443512.

———. 2006. “Religion and Politics: Did the Romans Scruple About the Placement of Their Temples?” In Religion in Republican Italy, 181–206. Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press.

Muccigrosso, John D., and Louis I. Hamilton. 2016. “Rome Research Group.” https://RomeResearchGroup.org/.

Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media. 2016. Zotero. https://www.zotero.org/.